HalfPixel.com: The Evil Webcomics Empire

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Electronic Tigers (Guest Starring The Ponz)

When leveraged properly, a popular webcomic can provide an ample source of income. A healthy mixture of donation incentives, merchandise, and publication can turn a successful hobby into a successful business venture. With enough spit, gumption, determination and elbow grease (spunk and grit don't hurt either), a skilled webcartoonist can turn their talents into a supplemental or even primary income. Thankfully, I'm not here to talk about people doing things the right way, but rather to lambaste someone for doing things in exactly the wrong way.

The Wrong Way to turn your comic into a cash fountain involves, among other qualities, impatience. Being impatient can lead an otherwise capable cartoonist down a path of failure, misery, and greed. I am talking in the general sense, of course; I wouldn't want to imply that the cartoonist behind Electronic Tigers is capable. Electronic Tigers is the worst kind of garbage: A gaming comic infused with heavily skewed political 'humor', mired in racism, fueled entirely by an asian with enormous bazongas. This 'hot azn' loudly and obnoxiously declares herself a virgin, solely for the economic benefits rather than her moral beliefs. These economic benefits extend to the creators, because for some bizarre reason, horny nerds find virginity to be infinitely more attractive than sexual experience. Therefore, Mika's virginity can be exploited in a myriad of ways to net cash dollars for her owners.

The average ET strip is really actually not very funny. The author fails so often to construct anything resembling a joke, and even when he comes close, the punchline often fails to be amusing. Instead the humor tries to spawn from "crazy situations" and "wacky character behavior" despite neither of these being taken to enough of an extreme that it approaches Chuckleville, much less Guffawston. It would also probably be funnier if it wasn't so incredibly racist.

As unfunny as the original Electronic Tigers was, it was decided a few months back that it just wasn't political enough. So once a week the ET brain trust releases a political comic known as Right Left Center or RLC, where the 'right' is represented as a calm, intelligent elephant, while the left is portrayed by a braying jack-ass of a strawman, which effectively reduces the viability of the 'right' viewpoint provided by the association. The strawmannery and flawed logical arguments were always a part of ET, but by separating the political commentary from the gaming comic, the creators hoped to make ET look less retarded. This didn't really work at all.

Recently, one of the Electronic Tiger handlers has fallen on hard financial times. Rather than putting his miserable comic on hiatus to find a job, and sparing me the discomfort associated with the mere knowledge of its existence, he has decided to prostitute his characters to feed his family. As his 'situation' continues, his political views become more and more vehement and vitriolic, as well as no relevance to reality, and instead of seeking employment, decides to argue his political opinion with his readers at length.

In an act of desperation, this creator has signed up with a company employing a Ponzi Pyramid Scheme (more commonly known as an MLM business) and actually has the gall to ask his few readers to throw their cash in under him. If any bite, then it will surely bite him when they can't even recoup their 'initial investment'. He then took some offense to Something Awful for flooding the comment page with arguments against MLM schemes (For some odd reason, SA users have an intense hatred for pyramid schemes, searching them out to quash them in their infancy) and also for registering their dislike for the comic while they were there. Retaliating against a massive readership spike simply because they were being negative is a great way to alienate them. Instead of insulting a group by referring to them as 'e-thugs' or 'cyberbullies' or 'digi-hooligans', an enterprising webcartoonist could easily find a way to turn a negative into a positive, and convert the haters into continued readers.

Converting a webcomic from a hobby to a job is not something that can happen overnight. It is a gradual process that takes careful planning and severe dedication. In desperation, resorting to exploitation, prostitution and pyramid schemes might turn a quick buck, but you'll end up shooting yourself in the foot in the long run. More self-destructive is a comic is created for the sole purpose of exploitation, prostitution, and pyramid schemes, as is the case of Electronic Tigers. If you want to see a decent gaming comic, there are plenty of better ones out there. If you want to see a decent conservative political comic, there are plenty of better ones out there. If you want to see pornographic, racist, or simply unfunny comics, again, there are plenty of better ones out there. Electronic Tigers is simply an abomination upon all of these genres, and serves no greater purpose other than the generation of easy money. Read more→

Count Your Sheep (Before They Hatch)

In order to reach the most number of people, one has to offend the least number of people. This is the cornerstone of print comics, where a slightly offensive comic strip is equal to about ten thousand letters to the editor. This is, of course, because newspapers are read primarily by the elderly, who get morally outraged over immigrants taking our jobs, even though they don't have jobs to be taken. Unfortunately, the younger generation often takes offense at unoffensiveness, which is why they turn to the Internet for laughs and laffs alike. And since the elderly can't use the Internet, webcomics don't require inoffensiveness for readership. Therefore, it's eternally baffling when a webcomic DECIDES to be inoffensive. This is the story of, among several others, Count Your Sheep.

CYS follows the saccharine exploits of a single mother, her 5-year-old daughter, and an imaginary sheep, a hallucination induced by sleeping pill abuse and mild psychosis as a result of a dead husband/father. Together, they engage in childish mischief rivalling Dennis the Menace, followed by the mother's stern disapproving gaze not unlike Hagar the Horrible's fat wife. There is also a lot taken from Calvin and Hobbes in terms of political and cultural topics, but the majority of inspiration comes from Garfield (post 1990s variation). Jokes about coffee, doctor's visits, monday mornings and sleeping all the time permeate the comic strip like marijuana smoke in the back of the Mystery Machine.

Even though he's inspired by some of the most prominent inoffensive comic strips around, Adrian Ramos still manages to fail writing a decent-yet-bland joke more often than not. Often giving punchlines that don't follow the premise, and others will suffer from a convoluted and strange set-up. Sometimes, the entire joke is just a massive trainwreck that misses its target and instead hits a busload of orphans. Others still have no joke at all. Most of Ramos's jokes fail to do their job of providing basic humor without the kick of edginess, and I have a feeling that adding in a sharp edge would still result in dull jokes.

When writing an overarching subplot for CYS, Ramos often neglects exposition and introduction to the narrative, and the stories end up feeling disjointed and sparse. I expect that this is Ramos acknowledging that he is incapable of coming up with a suitable joke to fit these situations, but rather than making a conscious effort and improving himself to counter his flaws, he avoids them and ends up with a story that's more threadbare than the carpet in a grass hut. Ultimately the plot isn't hindered by this emptiness, but it sure isn't enhanced, and it certainly isn't sufficient.

One thing that you might have noticed if you were astute is the predominant melancholic monochrome color scheme that saturates the site. Since it doesn't really cost more to print in color on the web, Ramos had to find a way to emulate this aspect of his newspaper inspirations without going the cheap route of simply not coloring his comic. The monochrome appearance creates the illusion of coloration, without giving up the newspapery feel of cheap production. The persevering blueness gives CYS a drab and monotonous overtone that makes it difficult to enjoy the sweet, simple humor as it's mangled for us by Ramos.

Count Your Sheep is as bland and uninteresting as any comic strip you'll find in a newspaper, only it has the added benefit of the low, low readership only found in webcomics. Adrian Ramos has a tendency to take the safe route when confronted with obstacles, and never challenges himself to improve his techniques. If he did, he might one day find himself between Gasoline Alley and Apartment 3-G, but until he does he will simply wallow in the mire that is the Internet, writing forced dialog and rigid catchphrases ("I should count sheep" isn't exactly going to sell t-shirts). If you want to be put to sleep, you don't need to count sheep, just read Count Your Sheep, and you'll be snoring before you can say "this is boring." Read more→

Something Positive: If You Don't Have Something Nice to Say, Post It on Anti-Snark

The majority of Internet users are cynical, untrusting, hate-filled piles of misery and mistrust. In theory, a comic full of characters who mirror this attitude (as well as paper-thin strawmen for them to attack with their rapier wit and superior intelligence) should be immensely successful amongst the misanthropes of the E-Zone. Something Positive has managed to build a comic on this premise, and promptly run it into the ground.

Devon, the author-insert, is a bastion of cynicism and sarcasm. Leading others down a sardonic path of self-loathing, and even converting a few mindless strawmen characters along the way, Randy Milholland fancies his Devon counterpart as a Sarcastic Jesus character, saving all the sarcastoids and defeating the forces of Happiness Hell.

Milholland has also managed to cut production costs by eliminating the Plotline Development Department. Instead, he simply re-runs the same 4 or 5 plotlines ad nauseum, merely recasting certain roles and fine-tuning dialog. Plot 1: Devon gets a new girlfriend. Plot 2: Devon finds out girlfriend is crazier than he thought. Plot 3: Devon gets involved in a play. Plot 4: Devon and Friends play a Role-playing game using 'zany' characters. Ultimately, each of these plots resolves the same way, so you really only need to read through the archive about a year before you've gotten all the plots read.

Milholland has caught on to this problem, but instead of writing new plots, he has simply beefed up his one-shot filler comics with a sizeable cast of 50 or so nitwits who were converted to the side of tolerability by Devon and his Sword of Sarcasm. This way, a reader will feel obligated to learn everything about each minor character by reading through the archive until he or she shows up as a blathering strawman, ready to be given character depth by Devon's divine influence.

Artistically, Something Positive is a stagnant marsh of fetid water. Milholland's characters are juvenile arrangements of facial features on the side of a lima bean, with the consistency of a bowl of banana pudding. The sarcastic, half-lidded gazes from smirking faces almost smarm me into a feeling of annoyance before they melt off their gelatinous skulls. From panel to panel the features are stretched and smushed before being redrawn. Minor characters are often hidden behind large glasses that obscure the otherwise expressionless eyes (expressionless because the artist has no idea how to convey happiness that isn't accompanied by smugness).

Perspective is a difficult concept for fourth graders, and Milholland is no exception. Most pages are framed with no spatial depth, and those that are try to keep it simple. However, occaisionally a few will slip through that make Guernica look like a technical diagram. Milholland is also terrible at drawing clothes, since everything he draws looks like it was tailored to fit Quasimodo (or Quetzalcotl, I'm not sure which). One thing is for certain, I won't be asking him to design my house or my wardrobe.

Sarcasm is fun. It lets you pretend you're smarter than someone simply by being indirect. Of course, there is a point where it gets ridiculous and excessive, and everyone gets sick of it. Something Positive has passed this point several times, each time stopping to ask for directions on how to get to "popular" (sarcastically of course). There is nothing we can do at this point to stop the sardonic juggernaut except hope that sarcasm is just a fad on the Internet, and will soon fall out of favor with the mindless sops who populate this dank corner of Cyberspace. The only positive thing about Something Positive that I can say is that it's not a comic that people feel the need to talk about a lot, since it's so offensive to my senses that the mere mention of it would induce vomiting. Read more→